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Urban and Regional Policy Fellowship

Urban and Regional Policy Fellowship Update: The Urban and Regional Policy Team will not be offering fellowships for the 2017-2018 year. We will be conducting a temporary hiatus. Please check back here for more updates on the next available cycle for the Urban and Regional Policy Fellowship.

Current and Past Urban and Regional Policy Fellows

The Urban and Regional Policy Program is pleased to announce the newest cohort of URP Fellows:

2016-2017 Fellows

Matthew Clarke, the National Director of Creative Placemaking at the Trust for Public Land in New York City is traveling to Berlin, Germany; Brussels, Belgium; and Hamburg, Germany to research creative placemaking as a tool to address inequitable and exclusionary urban development in New York.

Romain Paris, a Director of Urban Planning and Housing Policy with Ville de Montreuil is traveling from Paris, France. He is investigating community land trusts as an affordable housing solution in Boston, Massachusetts; Burlington, Vermont; and the Bay Area, California.

Jennifer Terry, a Broadband Project Manager with the Mayor’s Office, City of New Orleans will be investigating strategies for building fiber networks and using digital tools to promote equity by traveling to Helsinki, Finland; Stockholm; Sweden; and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

2015-2016 Fellows

Natalie Bonnewit, principal with Bonnewit Development Services and specializing in affordable and supportive housing development, will study how affordable housing development can include services for marginalized populations. She will travel to Amsterdam and Copenhagen and apply her fellowship experience to her work with numerous governments, developers, service providers, and healthcare companies throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

Andrea Jonas, planner for strategic urban development with the city of Cologne, Germany, will study integrated planning approaches in the United States that focus on socially and economically diverse populations. She will travel to Austin and San Francisco and will integrate her findings into a new strategic plan for Cologne.

Michael Skipper, executive director for the Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization in Nashville, Tennessee, will study European models of regional collaboration, including in Leeds, United Kingdom, and Antwerp, Belgium. His findings will feed into ongoing efforts to reform regional governance across the Nashville region to better meet the area’s policy challenges.

Catherine Sabbah, a staff writer and analyst with the business daily Les Echos in Paris, France, will study urban security in New York City and Chicago, focusing on how French cities could potentially use “smart city” solutions and big data to improve urban security.

2014-15 Fellows

Wayne Feiden, Director of Planning and Sustainability, City of Northampton, Massachusetts
Project: Transforming Small Post-industrial Legacy Cities into Resilient and Successful Places

Feiden has been director of planning and sustainability for Northampton since 1997. In this role, he oversees local economic, environmental, and social initiatives. He also recently served as an adjunct lecturer at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Feiden will research various revitalization efforts in smaller European legacy cities, focusing on the policies they are pursuing to reignite the vibrancy of their cities. Where relevant, he will highlight the commitments these places have made to sustainability and resiliency. He will travel to Vejle, Denmark, York, United Kingdom, and Londonderry/Derry, United Kingdom. These lessons will prove to be invaluable to Northampton. Though the city’s downtown has resurged, the city as a whole remains plagued by low investment, a shrinking population, and a host of challenges relating to its position as a small postindustrial city.

Julieanne Herskowitz, Vice President, New York City Economic Development Corporation
Project: Addressing New York City’s Crumbling Infrastructure: Lessons from the London Mayoral Community Infrastructure Levy & its Funding of Cross Rail

For the past four years, Herskowtiz has been at the New York City Economic Development Corporation. She is currently vice president, where she is the lead project manager for multiple large-scale public/private redevelopment projects across New York City.

Given the importance of well-maintained infrastructure for the social, environmental, and economic health of cities such as New York City, Herskowitz will research London’s infrastructure levy, a fee applied to new development to address local infrastructure needs. She will also assess the viability of transferring such a model to her hometown. Given the scale of the infrastructure maintenance backlog in New York City and the need for a new and innovative financing infrastructure financing tool, her research will be valuable to the local discussion on solutions.

Lykke Leonardsen, Head of Climate Unit, Technical and Environmental Administration, City of Copenhagen
Project: Implementation of Climate Change Solutions in U.S. cities

Leonardsen has been with the city for past 16 years, and has been head of Copenhagen’s recently established climate unit since January 2014. The unit combines the city’s adaptation and mitigation goals relating to climate change, and is charged with leading the city’s ambitious goal of becoming the first carbon neutral capital by 2025.

She will research emerging best practices for climate adaptation measures in four U.S. cities. She will travel to Portland, OR; Seattle, WA; New York City, NY; and Philadelphia, PA, focusing specifically on what these cities are doing in the fields of storm water management and costal protection. She will also focus on other important aspects of these measures, including implementation and maintenance, citizen involvement, and land use aspects such as zoning. The ultimate aim of the project will be to influence the evolution of Copenhagen’s own climate adaptation strategy.

Morris has been with the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, the metropolitan planning organization for Greater Philadelphia, since 1999. In her role as manager of the Office of Smart Growth, she works with hundreds of municipalities and government agencies to advance smart growth principles and link transportation and land use policy.

Morris will research how select European cities and regions are meeting the dual challenges of aging and urbanization, as Europe has the highest median age in the world, with life expectancy increasing into very old age. She will investigate how cities, particularly those in the U.K. Urban Ageing Consortium, have integrated age-friendly concerns into urban planning and design, specifically in housing, transport, and public spaces. The ultimate aim of this research will be to see how these strategies could be implemented in the 352 municipalities that are within the Commission’s purview.

In addition to his position at TRA, a Torino-based architecture firm, Robiglio is a professor at the Politecnico di Torino. His research topics include energy efficiency, green architecture, community design, and urban design. He has also held numerous advisory and consulting positions for urban planning projects in Torino, Milan, Rome, and many other Italian cities.

Robiglio’s project will focus specifically on adaptive reuse and the potential of industrial area to ignite and support creative urban regeneration, and will catalog emerging best practices in U.S. cities with a focus on key factors promoting successful reuse such as placemaking, sustainable design, and community involvement. Through his research outcomes, he will hope to influence local community groups, practitioners, and public authorities locally and beyond.

For the past 11 years, Shahum has been the executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. In this role, she advocates on behalf of bicycle policy for the city and engages within the broader transportation and sustainability dialogue within the city.

Shahum’s project will take her to Northern European cities to study their Vision Zero policy frameworks for reducing and ultimately eliminating traffic fatalities and severe injuries while simultaneously promoting non-automobile transportation options. Her travel will take her to places such as Sweden, where traffic fatalities have decreased over 30 percent since adoption of Vision Zero in 1997. Given that San Francisco has adopted a Vision Zero goal for 2024, her findings will be particularly timely to determine how exactly the broad coalition behind the vision should move forward with implementation.

Milos Kovacevic (September – December 2010), Member of Savski Venac Municipal Council, Belgrade, SerbiaProject:Building Sustainable and Inclusive Businesses in Central Cities
See a Serbian television program (English subtitles) on Kovacevic’s fellowship and the incubation center here. A podcast of a GMF interview with Kovacevic can be found here.

Jess Zimbabwe (November 2008 – February 2009), Director of the Mayors’ Institute on City DesignProject: Beggars into Choosers: Promoting Local Leadership in Design in the Face of Weak Market Conditions